Let’s talk about something difficult for a second. Haven’t there been times, as a marketing professional, that you’ve wanted to quit social media for good? I don’t mean doing the social “detox,” like you read about. I mean wanting to yank it out of your service offerings. To say no way when people asked you if you did social media marketing. I know I have wanted to quit in the past, and with good reason. Social media marketing takes a lot of time. It’s hard to come up with new ideas. It’s easy, no matter how seemingly innocent the post, to upset someone and start a flame war. It’s a treacherous and unsteady world out there. That’s why, I think, so many marketers stop social media marketing altogether. Those reasons are, in fact, why I felt like I’d failed as a social media marketer.

But, in all things, if at first you don’t succeed, try again. Especially since, as a marketer, my clients wanted social media help, and I couldn’t very well turn them away. I had to discover my own pain points as a social media marketer, and figure out how to fix them. So, I looked at the reasons I thought some social media freelancers, marketers and even agencies failed, and I came up with answers. Why do so many social media marketers fail? And how do we beat those odds so we can succeed?

Complaint #1 – I Can’t Convince My Clients To Pay Enough

There are a number of reasons your clients might not want to pay your hourly rate for social media marketing. They may not be convinced of the potential ROI. Maybe they think they don’t need it. You know they’re wrong, because even in your darkest moments you know that social media is an important part of the sales funnel. You bring people in with amazing and informative posts, and they will often follow through to your call-to-action. Social media drives traffic to your website, can drive foot traffic to a brick and mortar store, and establishes goodwill in your industry. It can establish contact that a company rarely gets to have – personal, emotional impact that can go miles toward catapulting a brand into the spotlight.

So how do you convince clients of this? There are a couple of ways to educate business owners about the power of social media marketing that can help you. Show them that their competitors are on social media, and the engagement they get from their social media marketing. That proves to them that social media is where the customers are. Show them the power of search on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. People are searching for what your client is selling using hashtags and other methods, and they’re looking on social channels. Finally, show them how cost effective social media marketing is in relation to other types of advertising, like billboards, television ads and other media buys. They can get a lot of bang for their buck with social media.

A good social media strategy starts with SMART goals. I’ve created a helpful downloadable item that will help you as you plan for success as a social media marketer. I’m committed to providing accurate, essential information that will help social media marketers win the social game.

Complaint #2 – I Don’t Have a Good Way to Show Results To My Clients

While a lot of social media posts can generate sales, social media is more about engagement and building a brand image. So, if you’re looking to tell a client that the social media marketing tasks in a given month generated x amount of dollars in sales, that could get tricky. Some months your social media efforts might not result in sales. And, in all cases, the benefits of social media marketing stretch beyond simple sales numbers. That’s why there are analytics tools. They show post or tweet reach. They show how many people like or retweet a post. They show how well people like a brand. You certainly don’t get that sort of data from people who buy a product or service. Sure, they may buy, but how do they feel about their experience?

That’s, of course, a post for another time. You can easily show a client your post engagement and reach, either within the social media channel itself, or with PromoRepublic’s analytics.

Complaint #3 – It Takes Too Much Time to Schedule Content

In the old days, social media marketing took a LOT of time. In addition to coming up with the content for posts, you had to manually post to each social channel – at the time you wanted to the post to go live. A lot of people still think this is the best way.

We all know this isn’t actually true. With the advent of post scheduling on social media channels themselves, you can do it there, but that is still more time consuming than it needs to be. You can use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer. They both let you schedule posts far into the future. Or, again, you can use PromoRepublic where you can not only access the content calendar of post ideas, but you can schedule posts right from the tool. It’s easy and streamlined, and saves tons of time.

Complain #4 – I Can’t Come Up With Enough Ideas to Post

Nothing is more discouraging than what I like to call “Digital Antisocial Syndrome.” By that I don’t mean that you don’t want to be on social networks. By that I mean that you can’t think of anything good to post. When you’re just managing your personal accounts, that’s fine. Just don’t post that day. But if you have a client paying for a schedule of posts, and you can’t think of enough content to post for that schedule, you’re in trouble. In planning content, you should follow the 50-30-20 rule. 50% of your posts should be entertaining and/or educational. 30% should be product or service promotion. 20% should be thought leadership and curated content.

That’s all well and good, but you still have to think of the images you want to use (and find them), and the copy you want to write. A lot of social media marketers think they need a graphic designer and copywriter on board to execute professional-looking and engaging social posts. That’s not the case these days. Rather than spending time on Google searches for ideas, and money on professionals to help you create posts, you can do it all yourself. You can use a free graphics tool like Canva, and use headline tools with CoSchedule to come up with catchy headlines. Or, you can use my beloved PromoRepublic that offers lots of post ideas every day.

The templates are already professionally designed and have pre-written copy that you can modify for the business you’re promoting. You can publish even more content than you’d originally planned. PromoRepublic offer a free 14-day trial.